


The Darkest Dreams of Dean Winchester

by HeartsandThumbs



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dean is In Over His Head, Depression, Other, Suicidal Dean Winchester, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 06:51:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17617568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartsandThumbs/pseuds/HeartsandThumbs
Summary: Everyone wears a mask- sometimes it's to protect ourselves, and sometimes it's to protect others. Dean's been falling apart for a long time, but no one sees...no one ever sees.TRIGGER WARNINGS APPLY. Rated 'M' for sensitive themes.





	The Darkest Dreams of Dean Winchester

**Author's Note:**

> The darkest thoughts of Dean Winchester. DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO TRIGGERS. THEY ARE LISTED BELOW.
> 
> TW: Suicidal Ideation, Passively Suicidal Thoughts, Major Depression/References to Major Depression

_It wasn’t because of Sam._

None of it was, really. He was just a little too tired. A little too...broken?

He couldn’t say where the cracks came from, or when pieces of him began to weather and chip off. He couldn’t say when ‘much’ had become ‘too much’, or when the taste of whiskey stopped burning and just kind of left a dull pain...not much at all, really. It was just kind of an ‘oh, there you are’. Dull was _something_ in an existence that seemed to mean nothing.

He wasn’t needed. Sammy was grown now, didn’t need him anymore. Grew up into a hell of a kid all on his own. Everyone else...well, they were just...gone. Mom was gone, dad was gone, Jo and Ellen were gone...Charlie, and Bobby, and Cas were gone.

It was noble, honorable really, if not a little selfish that Sammy kept bringing him back to life. It was also a little egocentric of his brother to think that Dean only played the martyr for him. Only for him. It wasn’t. It wasn’t because of Sam...but, dying a hero seemed better than going out a coward.

It seemed as though the hero complex was shared with his little brother, and, well, that presented a problem. Dean began to rue the day he’d ripped Sammy out of normalcy for the last time. Kid could’ve had it all- a fancy degree and a funny hat...a wife, couple kids...a hell of a job with the house and car to match. No...he should’ve never dragged Sam into the dark black hole that gnawed and scratched and consumed everything that was supposed to make him happy.

‘Pleasure’ wasn’t the same as happiness, but he’d tried it for awhile regardless...fucking the pain away. He tried to eat it away, sleep it away, drink it away...all in turn, until he had each of the deadly sins on speed dial, right along with Death themselves, whoever had the gig nowadays.

Happiness and light, on the other hand, remained elusive.

He saw it sometimes, when Sam found a stray dog, or a particularly heinous looking vegetable. He saw it in the couples they saved, and even civilians drinking their coffee. He knew what it looked like, but he knew it could never be his.

Something fucked up was ingrained deep into his brain. No matter how many people tried to convince him that he was the good guy, and he deserved to be saved, too, and that he should have a fair chance- it never clicked. They were wrong. Oh, he’d go to bat swinging to convince anyone else of their own worth- and he had...but, none of those rules applied to Dean.

Dean liked the dark, Dean liked the quiet. Dean didn’t want anymore...of anything. No pain, no fake happiness, no dullness, no numb. Just quiet. He wondered often if Sammy would ever just give up on him. They’d let countless good people die, or let them go, let them leave...why should he be among the living? It seemed a complex issue. If God, or whatever, wanted him to have happiness and stay alive for it...where was it? If God was punishing him...then why couldn’t he just be done with it? He’d been through enough.

He was a fuck up. He’d screwed up any chance at happiness he could ever get, first with Lisa and Ben, and then, and ultimately- with Cas. If there was any way he could have screwed that up more, he’d be impressed. But now, Cas was gone. Talk about long distance. Heaven was a bit out of his reach. He figured he wouldn’t be going there anyway, and he wouldn’t be worth the angel’s effort to pull him from Hell again.

Then, there was Sammy. He didn’t even want to go into all the ways he’d drug Sammy down with him.

He couldn’t even count on his own two hands anymore the amount of people he’d lost to Death, or lost to a monster, or...just, lost. People didn’t have to die to be lost...sometimes they just...weren’t...anymore, and he had no one to blame but himself.

And Dean couldn’t be okay with that. So it built up, and built up over weeks, and then months and ultimately years. And he was tired. He was tired of people lying to him saying that there was something better, that there was rest...not to give up, to keep fighting. _He_ was sick of telling other people things that he just couldn’t stomach for himself. So, hypocrite was added onto the choice words he had for himself, towards the top with _useless, failure, fuck-up, unlovable, unworthy…_

His story didn’t get a ‘happily ever after’ because fairy tales just didn’t exist. People didn’t just get to fuck up as much as he did and come out of it with anything close to happiness.

Every time he got the chance, he offered his life for the world. Every time.

He wasn’t even good enough to die.

The whiskey didn’t kill him.

The loneliness didn’t kill him.

The recklessness didn’t kill him.

Death didn’t kill him.

But he was dead, regardless. And no one knew. No one could see how bad it had gotten. He didn’t know if he was just a good actor, with fake smiles and empty words...or just if no one cared. He didn’t blame them. He just wished they’d stop bringing him back. Just let it be quiet.

Everyone was dying anyway. Time killed everyone. What no one seemed to understand was that it was the most torturous way to go, and he’d take being in Hell with Alastair over this. So, Dean began to do something that he never did. He prayed to God, wherever he was, or to a spiteful angel...to just...let him be done.

It was never done.

And so Dean lived. If you could call breathing living.

If you could call this a life.

And no one ever saw. No one ever knew.

Self-hatred and depression were words he’d never use, but they used him, and they took everything from him until he was this. He felt his soul screaming for help, help never came.

He didn’t think he’d ever be able to love himself after everything he’d done. And so, as a fitful punishment, the powers that be...made him live.

It wasn’t a happy story. But it was his. And it was real. And despite everything...and wanting to pen ‘the end’, he always kept a few pages open...just in case he could ever forgive himself.


End file.
